Lt. Harold Shaw RE

[Mark Hone]

Sorry to be providing a burst of enquiries but I am trying to tie up some loose ends in connection with my Roll of Honour research prior to the preparation of a plaque for St George's Church and a booklet on the Bury Grammar school boys who died in the Ypres Salient. One of the boys listed on our war memorial is 'Lieut. Harold Ashworth Shaw RE'. A few years ago, when I was doing the preliminary identification of places of burial/commemoration via the CWGC I had blithely assumed that he was the Lt. H. Shaw killed on 26th April 1917 buried at Aubigny Communal Cemetery Extension, the only RE Lt. of that name on the database. Unfortunately when I came to cross-reference this on 'Officers Died' I found that it can't be, as the H. in that officer's name stands for Herman! I can find no other plausible candidate for this person on officers died or the CWGC database. I am wondering if he is a third 'missing man' who appears on our school war memorial but not in CWGC records. The other two are a merchant seaman who died in an accidental shipwreck in 1914 and a Canadian who was wounded at 2nd Ypres, invalided out and died at home in Toronto. Shows you should always cross-check sources. Call yourself an historian...